From documents in the archives at Moscow, Dr. Hamel recovered the Christian names, and a list of Sir Dudley Digges' attendants in this voyage, which corresponds with that in the MS., thus:—Arthur Nowell, Thomas Woodward, Adam Cooke, Joseph Fante, Thomas Leake, Richard James, George Brigges, Jessy De Quester, Adam Jones, Thomas Wakefield, John Adams, Thomas Crisp, Leonard Hugh, and John Coplie. This last must therefore have designated John Tradescant himself, who was certainly there.
Sir Dudley Digges, to whom Tradescant seems to have attached himself in order to obtain knowledge of the plants and other natural curiosities of Russia, was sent by King James I. to the Czar Michael Fedorowitsch, who had in the previous year despatched an embassy to the king, principally to negotiate for a loan. This ambassador, Wolünsky, returned at the same time, in another vessel accompanying that of Sir Dudley.
Dr. Hamel in his memoir has given considerable extracts from the MS. narrative of the voyage, which show that Tradescant was an accurate observer not only of objects connected with his studies of phytology and natural history, but of other matters. Parkinson has justly styled him "a painful industrious searcher and lover of all natural varieties;" and elsewhere says: "My very
good friend, John Tradescantes, has wonderfully laboured to obtain all the rarest fruits hee can heare of in any place of Christendome, Turky, yea, or the whole world." The passages in the journal of his voyage, which prove it to be indubitably his, are numerous, but the one which first struck Dr. Hamel was sufficient; for in following the narrator on the Dwina, and the islands there, and, among others, to Rose Island, he found this note, "Helebros albus, enoug to load a ship." There are, however, others confirmatory beyond a doubt. Parkinson, in his Paradisus Terrestris, p. 528., has the following passage:—
"There is another (strawberry) very like unto this (the Virginia strawberry, which carrieth the greatest leafe of any other except the Bohemian), that John Tradescante brought with him from Brussels (l. Russia) long ago, and in seven years could never see one berry ripe on all sides, but still the better part rotten, although it would flower abundantly every yeare, and beare very large leaves."
Tradescant mentions that he also saw strawberries to be sold in Russia, but could never get of the plants, though he saw the berries three times at Sir D. Digges's table; but as they were in nothing differing from ours, but only less, he did not much seek after them. It is most probable that he brought seed, as he did of another berry, of which he sent part, he tells us, to his correspondent Vespasian Robin at Paris.
Of a man to whom the merit is due of having founded the earliest Museum of Natural History and Rarities of Art in England, and who possessed one of the first, and at the same the best, Botanic Garden, every little particular must be interesting, and it would be pleasing to find that he was an Englishman, and not a foreigner. The only ground for the latter supposition is, I believe, the assertion of Anthony à Wood, that he was a Fleming or a Dutchman. The name Tradescant is, however, neither Flemish nor Dutch, and seems to me much more like an assumed English pseudonyme. That he was neither a Dutchman nor a Fleming will, I think, be obvious from the following passage in the narration of his travels:
"Also, I haue been tould that theare growethe in the land bothe tulipes and narsisus. By a Brabander I was tould it, thoug by his name I should rather think him a Holander. His name is Jonson, and hathe a house at Archangell. He may be eyther, for he [is] always drūke once in a day."
Now, had Tradescant himself been a Fleming or a Dutchman, he would at least have been able to speak decisively on this occasion; to say nothing of the vice of intemperance which he attributes to the natives of those countries. Again, it is quite clear that this journal of travels was written by Tradescant; yet that name does not appear either in the MS. or in the Russian archives: but we have John Coplie in both, with the indication in the MS. that he was a Worcestershire man. Let us therefore, on these grounds, place him in the list of English worthies to whom we owe a debt of gratitude. But supposing Tradescant to have been his real name, it is quite evident that he travelled under the name of John Coplie; and it is perhaps vain to speculate upon the reasons for the assumption of a pseudonyme either way.
Dr. Richard James, who accompanied Sir Dudley Digges as chaplain, appears, from Turner's account of his MSS., which are deposited in the Bodleian, to have left behind him a MS. account of his travels in Russia, in five sheets; but his MS. seems to have been lost or mislaid in that vast emporium, or we might have some confirmation from it respecting Tradescant.